Extolling the virtues of a quality education system may seem like stating the obvious, but in countries like the United States, this needs to be reiterated repeatedly, since it’s easy to become discouraged with efforts to reform education. For more than a century, federal, state, and local governments have devoted so much time and money to improving schools. Indeed, the American government spends far more on public education than most countries in the developed world.
However, despite this, the American education system remains rather lackluster. Not only do American students rank below many other countries in the world, but it has largely failed in closing the achievement gap between students. Whatever people are trying to do in American schools, it’s evidently not working.
Naturally, this gives people reason to doubt the whole endeavor altogether. After all, what if it’s all one big mistake to expect so much from public schools in the first place? What if students will simply follow their predestined path no matter what their schools do? Could all the extra money used for education be put to better use?
This is the argument of a recent essay by writer Freddie deBoer, who no doubt echoes the thoughts of many burned-out teachers. He claims conversations about education have been distorted by “optimism bias, the insistence that all problems in education are solvable and that we can fix them if only we want to badly enough.” He notes most empirical data show nearly all students will group themselves into
